It is known that hair can be set and dressed to have a desired style by application of an atomized resin composition, a foamed resin composition (so-called mousse), a gel composition, etc.
The hair setting gel composition comprises a gel-forming base and a resin for hair setting. Gel-forming bases generally employed include crosslinked carboxyvinyl polymers. Cellulose derivatives are rarely used as gel-forming bases. As the resin for hair setting, nonionic resins are generally employed.
Hair setting resins further include cationic resins and anionic resins. However, in cases where a crosslinked carboxyvinyl polymer is used as a gel-forming base, cationic resins form an ionic complex with the anionic crosslinked carboxyvinyl polymer to thereby precipitate a polymer, failing to form a gel. Anionic resins cause destruction of a gel, i.e., viscosity reduction, which is believed to be ascribable to the counter ion site of the anion site, similarly failing to form a gel.
From these reasons, nonionic resins, e.g., a vinylpyrrolidone polymer, a vinylpyrrolidone/vinyl acetate copolymer, etc., have been employed as a hair setting resin in the conventional hair setting gels containing a crosslinked carboxyvinyl polymer as a gel-forming base. However, the hair setting gels using these nonionic resins are disadvantageous in that they easily undergo influences of humidity and are not fully satisfactory in hair setting performance. That is, while the nonionic resin in the form of a film before moisture adsorption is so hard and causes flaking (i.e., release from hair) for luck of affinity to hair, it becomes very soft at high temperatures and high humidities, resulting in not only reduction of hair setting properties but also blocking of hairs which makes combing or brushing difficult.